Near Stranger
by theSincerities
Summary: AU. (multichaptered). "My life grew to begin with a woman named Sakura Haruno." – Shikamaru/Sakura.


13 July 2013

Near Stranger  
**by: **theSincerities

* * *

_Love me, love me: Say that you love me.  
Fool me, fool me: Go on and fool me.  
Love me, love me: Pretend that you love me.  
Lead me, lead me: Just say that you need me._

- the Cardigans

* * *

There was an eerie time in my life when the world was colorless—all gray; but there came an occasion when the colors splattered one by one, beginning with green.

Green stood for life—and my life grew to begin with a woman named Sakura Haruno.

* * *

.

.

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Miss Sakura Haruno stumbled into my life through an ex whom I remained in contact with—though I did no more than I did with this "Sakura Haruno." In short, I spoke with neither unless obligated.

This woman was strangely independent, as was I, which brings me to mention how strange I _also_ found the call I received one rainy afternoon. It was a number I hadn't known, but the voice calling from it remained vaguely familiar.

"_Hello_?" she had murmured after I picked up, and I had stood listening to the patter against my living room's windowpanes.

"Who is this—?"

"Sakura Haruno—a friend of Ino's."

_A friend of Ino's? _– I immediately wondered. _"_Oh—. You must have dialed the wrong number; Ino doesn't live here anymore. She moved out."

"I know. I'm calling for Shikamaru …"

At this moment, the gusts crashing against my windows accentuated the tree whose branches scratched alongside them.

I was stunned. "… this is Shikamaru." Then, at that very moment, I also began to see green.

"Do you mind meeting me at the dango shop by the bath houses?"

Sakura, I soon realized, was more than just strangely independent. "Can I ask what for? I think it started to rain just a while ago …"

"I'd like some company."

Within a few moments, I had dissolved her words; and I also managed to find a tinge of worry within me. Her voice was too . . . soft.

"Okay. Sure."Then, I found that I was already reaching for a vest and coat. "I'll be there soon."

* * *

That afternoon I padded through the crowded raindrops—no, I didn't have an umbrella. I just kept my head lowered.

I knew my way to the dango shop only because when I was still with Ino, she often asked me to pick her up at the bathhouses during the summer. She had gotten into the habit of always buying a few skewers of dango with an order of red bean soup to drown away the rest of her day. This time, though, instead of sitting out by the flaps near the entrance, I burst in with a slight hunch as I skimmed the benches for a lone woman.

When I finally spotted her, she had been near the wall nursing a teacup, and I barely happened to see a plate of lonely dango placed beside her.

"Hey."

I took a seat in front of her, carefully taking in the distinctness of her plain image: Pale, rosy hair; a slim, natural figure; and, most importantly, the most capturing of green eyes. She barely chose to glance back at me, so I waited by taking a quick sip at the tea the waitress had generously provided me with upon my arrival.

I was in no state to hurry her—, which soon turned out to be worth my while because she spoke on her own.

"He's gone."

'**He**'—I decided to logically claim—was the man Sakura had been feverously involved with; and '**He**' had run off and erased her from his life, claiming them to have been a tragic success and that "the time to go had arrived."

Her deepest love had now turned into her worst heartbreak.

It wasn't just me when I eventually concluded that her hair had grown longer since I last (and first) remembered. I seriously doubted it was for the rogue now gone from the village, but rather a _consequence_ that had happened because of him. I felt guilty for believing it was actually a pleasant change to her appearance, but her eyes were what would later come to overtake me.

We left the dango shop not long after she absently mumbled what had recently happened between her and her "ex." She brought along her umbrella, which I willingly held open for her as she hugged her arms and continued forward.

A faint pigment of red soon began flickering within me and with each following step.

"I loved him," she said. "I still love him."

* * *

I had chosen to walk her home, afraid she wouldn't be safe alone, and I spent most of my remaining afternoon sitting with her in her living room - comforting her with my presence.

The first act I urged myself to consider was the act of asking why she had thought to call me, of all people. The answer I received was then lain out to me simply, almost as though, despite the intelligence I had often received praise for, I had overlooked it foolishly.

"I felt I needed somebody to listen," she began. "This time not somebody close to me, not somebody who already knew my past or character; just someone who had perhaps seen me around the village and nothing more, nothing less. I needed a blank perspective so that I could assure myself that I was free of advice or bias.

"I'm not asking you for comfort and I'm not asking you to treat me as Ino's friend. I don't need you to pretend to love me, either, or to tell me everything will be okay. I don't need you to do anything except show me you're willing stay to by my side, surveying me until I'm ready to spread my wings again and fly. Lie to me if you ever have to, but please . . . just stay by my side. That's all I ask."

She was lost – it showed through her voice. She was so lost, so internally, emotionally broken and lost, that I found myself unable to reject the proposal. I could see, just as easily, that she was openly asking for help, something that felt both necessary and unusual at once.

I had said so before and I will again: From my only experience meeting her one day while at Ino's flower shop, I knew right away that Sakura Haruno, Ino's best friend, was by all means—with her strikingly capturing, faultless viridian eyes—a fiercely independent woman. Today, however, this powerful fact had been sanded down to its vulnerable core – to the woman sitting before me, stating assertively (because to be assertive was all she could do as of then) that all she was asking for was company.

She was asking me for company, for reassurance from a bystander who knew nothing more than her name and the story she had freshly explained no more than an hour previous.

"My loved ones can't offer me what I look for," she had replied when I asked about friends or family—when I had specifically asked why she chose a near stranger as her wingman. "I ask for someone to offer an unbiased shoulder to lean on from time to time—a shoulder free of opinion, free of advice, of care or empathy. Just an ordinary, unknowing, indifferent shoulder. A near, willing, stranger is exactly what I am looking for because they won't know a thing about me or how I think or work . . . so they can't go off and mold together a summary of who they'll be working with and pitying."

Her words faded into the living room as she paused to take a piece of frozen dark chocolate she had lain out on the coffee table.

She bit it, and looked at me.

"To you, as of now, I am nothing more than Sakura Haruno, Ino's best friend, and a woman about your age who lives in your village who is now asking you to help accompany her through a hard time in her life."

She was right, to the extent of saying saying she was nothing more than what she had said because, at that exact moment, I leaned forward over my knees to piece together one more thing: She would now be the first, since I could last remember, to steal my attention with the flicker of a gaze.

I sat, leaning in (figuratively) toward the abyss of a matte, glossy green staring through my plain and black eyes. At that moment, I absently agreed with a nod and an _Okay_. I specialized in detachment—so knowing I could at least offer what she wanted helped me feel as though I could actually be of some use.

One might ask me if I minded feeling like a temporary doll, just something otherwise material that she would carry around and manipulate at will. I would say, _"__No_," because I didn't feel as though I were being treated like an item—I felt as though I was agreeing to aid someone whom I somehow felt an obligation to shelter and cater to. There was something about her that afternoon, something about the way she called out to me and openly asked me to assist her, that caught my attention.

I didn't like seeing such an otherwise composed and capable woman so reduced and defenseless. I felt obligated to protect her, to mend the powerlessness she was victim to.

I wanted to help her fly again because that's what both she and I wanted.

So, that early evening I left, assuring her that I would do as she wished for me to. I would be by her side when she would call, I would be there to listen if she spoke, I would stand and hold her out to the open until she gave me the okay to release her and watch her flutter away.

The only falter, I would later realize, was that she was asking for a stranger, and in the end she would be subject to receive a man who would have, by then, crippled himself into a love so profound, so inflammable, that when she would sit, extending her wings—readying them—he would no longer wish to let go. He would no longer be a stranger, but rather the greatest admirer she would ever come to interact with.

Just as I offered my assistance so readily that day, I, myself, began to crumble into an irreversible love.

.

.

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note1. A story fit to be about two or three chapters. A story about the profoundness of love in all aspects, about the defenselessness it leaves the beholder in, about the euphoric, almost **toxic** state it envelops its victim(s) in. Expect ambiguity (my favorite thing to incorporate into my stories) and perhaps irony in this piece.

note2. My first official crack pairing. I'm completely drugged with fondness for the possibilities.

Until next time!

Yvette.

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**Disclaimer.** Credit for _Naruto_ and its characters belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.


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